Personally I believe there aren’t any people, events or issues that have influenced me as a designer directly. Instead, I believe my observations and original responses to these observations have. I see myself as an observationalist when it comes to art and design, and I create design-based responses to the things I observe.
Something that I believe that’s influenced the designer I am now was inventing designs based on my observations of my favourite video games, visual media, and animated media when I was a child. Being particularly fond of Nintendo’s ‘Super Mario’ franchise (playing the video games and collecting the toys were a big part of my childhood), I often drew lots of its different elements like the characters, ‘power-ups’ and locations (video game levels). In turn, this developed into inventing my own new and original adaptations and concepts of these elements based on the rules and visual design of the Super Mario universe and imagining how they would feature in the games.
Following this, I began to create completely original illustrations and design concepts of; original characters, architecture, poster design, and both art and stories for graphic novels. Adjacent to this, I had begun observing through an unbiased eye the world around me; the current state of our world, the environments around us, the worries of modern-day society and the planet, and the people we share these with, to name a few specifics. Being rather introverted throughout my teenage years is what developed this observationalism as I would rather enjoy viewing and observing the people and the world around me than actively try to be a part of it. I now pursue to incorporate this in my original visual design work to create fresh pieces of media, for instance when I create a graphic novel of fictional literature I want its setting and characters to reflect attributes of the real world.
References:
Figure 1: Nintendo (2019) Mario Pirahna Plant Buzzy Beetle art shaded [Promotional artwork]. Available online: https://www.mariowiki.com/File:Mario-piranha-plant-buzzy-beetle_art_shaded.png [Accessed: 22/07/2020]
Figure 2: Nintendo (2017) Grand Group Artwork – Super Mario 3D World [Promotional Artwork]. Available online: https://www.mariowiki.com/File:Grand_Group_Artwork_-_Super_Mario_3D_World.jpg [Accessed: 22/07/2020]
